Truth and doubt
by planet p
Summary: AU; Miss Parker learns some unexpected truths. Miss Parker/Jarod
1. Chapter 1

**Truth and doubt** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_2005_

The papers were all right there in front of her, as clear as day. Her hands shook as she held them. She sensed Jarod's presence close beside her in the near-empty warehouse, reading the same papers she was reading, but she could not helping feeling more disconnected from him that she had ever felt.

Charlton, the baby boy Brigitte had given birth to, hadn't been her baby, after all. He was neither, as she had expected, her son. He was the son of Epiphany Raines and the Pretender, Kyle. He was her nephew, and Jarod's.

The feeling she'd had when she'd entered the warehouse, of beginning to feel ill, increased. The papers went on to explain that William Raines was her father, but that Lyle wasn't her brother. In fact, he wasn't even in possession of the anomaly which she and Jarod were. He was just someone Raines had thought would fit the bill. Her real brother was Cox.

The papers slipped from her fingers and gathered on the bare concrete floor. She'd only just that morning discovered that she was pregnant with Jarod's child, and now she had to endure this.

She turned about and walked out. She badly needed a cigarette. It was bitterly cold outside, and the cold stung her eyes, making them water. She took out something sweet and resembling a cigarette and put it in her mouth. She was going to have a baby, she couldn't afford to smoke.

* * *

Her hands and her breathe shook as she turned to regard Jarod, who'd come out of the warehouse a few minutes later, after setting his affairs and the papers into order. "I can take almost anything," she told him waveringly, as her breath misted in front of her, "but to find out that my honest twin brother is as twisted as the man I'd thought was my brother…" Her voice shook and faltered. She couldn't go on.

Jarod merely stood with her and watched the cloudy light falling all around them.

Miss Parker hoped he'd come to her and put his arms around her, but he didn't. She would have to tell him about the pregnancy sooner or later, she knew.

* * *

Returning to the Center, she felt illness beyond compare. But where it used to be just illness dwelling inside her quietly, she now felt wrongness, and the lies of the past as though they were insect stings. She could not let those lies hurt her baby, she realised. She _would_ not let them.

She sidestepped Lyle when he came to meet her and shot him a quick remark about feeling unwell and thinking she'd caught something from her friend's children, and headed for Cox's office. (She had been out of town visiting a friend from boarding school, went the official line.)

She didn't knock to enter Cox's office, she just let herself in off the bat. She wouldn't play games with him, of all people, she had enough games to play with her unreal twin, Lyle.

"I'm pregnant," she told him, "I need you to tell me that it's alright. I _want_ to know if my baby's alright!"

Cox stood up from his chair and moved around his desk, approaching her with measured steps.

She didn't scoot forward to offer him any help. In her mind, she was battling with the urge to reach for her gun, and to rest her hand on the cold, safe weight of it. "You're its uncle!" she hissed. "If you hurt it, you go to Hell."

Cox stopped, steps away. A frown worked its slow, steady way onto his face. "How is that?" he asked, but his voice was cool and collected.

She spat the truth out like it was a lie; to her, it was much worse than a lie. "I'm your sister; we're twins."

It was Cox who took her in a hug, and held her tight.


	2. Chapter 2

As it turned out, Cox had also inherited the Inner Sense. The only thing he knew about Lyle was that he had worked for something called the Aurora Institute, L.A. in the past, and that didn't begin to explain why Raines had wanted Miss Parker to think he was her twin, nor, if indeed Raines knew that he wasn't. (He explained all of this to Miss Parker whilst they sat in his office.)

What was even more confusing was that the Aurora Institute wasn't based in Los Angeles, or even had anything to do with the city, as far as Cox had been able to establish. In fact, he hadn't been able to establish a whole lot of anything in relation to the institute, except that it was something he'd heard from one of his Voice Guides.

At that point, Miss Parker frowned. "'Voice Guide?'"

Cox gave a nod. "Well, as you know, the Inner Sense is sometimes referred to as 'the Voices.'"

"A Voice Guide is one of the Voices whom you trust?" Miss Parker took a stab at a guess after its meaning.

"Exactly," Cox replied.

It was silly to be trusting Cox so frivolously, but she couldn't help it. She supposed he really was her brother. "You have more than one?" she asked.

"Our birth mother," Cox listed, with a nod, "and a girl whom I knew in high school. She was murdered."

Miss Parker made a face. She wondered if the girl had been his sweetheart.

"She was a neighbour. We didn't really know each other beyond school," Cox explained.

"I hear Momma sometimes," Miss Parker volunteered. "Catherine, our mom," she added. After a moment, she asked the question that had been bugging her for the last half a minute. "Do you think Raines knows that Lyle's not my brother?"

"He is our father, isn't he? One would think he'd have, in the very least, a suspicion."

"He doesn't hear Voices," Miss Parker told him.

Cox nodded slowly. "But he has made a job out of observing people, and he has the input of Angelo when he wants it."

"Do you think Angelo would be honest with him?" Miss Parker asked, suddenly wondering if, and what, Angelo's motive could be if he'd lied to Raines.

"I'm not sure that the power of honesty and dishonesty is within his control, frankly," Cox commented. "I'd hazard that, were he to feel strongly inclined to the truth of a matter, he'd only speak when the truth was upon him, and not the many fabricant variations."

Miss Parker frowned. "But Raines would insist."

"And in doing so he would get his answer, whether it was truth or not," Cox replied.

Miss parker allowed herself to relax, glad that the baby was okay, and that she hadn't had to shoot Cox just yet. "Why did you come to Blue Cove?" she asked.

"Because you're here," Cox answered. "Why did you come back?"

"Because Daddy asked me, and I was assured a job."

Cox smiled, shrugging. "Well, yes."

"Well, what?" Her snappy mood was back in full force with her often suspicious mind.

"Well, now that Mr. Parker is out of the picture, it's looking a little different, the future's a little less certain and a little more unsure," Cox placated. "That's all I'd meant to say."

Miss Parker narrowed her eyes on him. "Don't try that smooth talking bullshit on me, I'm your sister, I'll know the instant it's out of your mouth, and I won't be shy to kick your ass."

"Perhaps you ought to take the ass-kicking a little lighter, for the little one's sake," Cox pointed out, unruffled.

Miss Parker snorted. Sure, Cox giving her doctor's advice. Her palm was itching to slap him across the face, but then he'd probably come up with a mark and the rumour brigade would snap to the it's-so-obvious/it-couldn't-be-more-obvious they're having a relationship, and then she'd just want to puke on anyone who looked at her with affair eyes, and that, she hazarded a guess, would not go down very well. "Babies don't just make themselves, much less announce themselves out of thin air. Go on, ask!"

Cox's face worked with a frown. "I know who the baby's father is, Miss Parker; I'm your brother."

Miss Parker laughed, then stopped. He was serious, wasn't he? She glared at him in a manifestly horrible way. She still wanted to slap him, except now the urge had grown stronger. "Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked, in a low voice.

"No, I do not," he answered.

"_Have_ you _ever_ had a girlfriend?"

He frowned, disconcerted. "No, I have not," he answered.

Miss Parker's eyes rounded and she burst into giggly laughter. She took a deep breathe and asked, "Do you like men?"

Cox's expression was not pleased. "No, I do not like men," he told her. "I'm fairly certain that I like women."

"How certain is 'fairly certain'?" Miss Parker joked, unable to stop herself.

"Fairly certain that the young woman in whom I have developed a stronger attraction will have to be the one to make first move," Cox answered bristly.

"How young?" Miss Parker questioned, resisting the urge to be too prodding with her questions.

Cox's face adequately displayed his discomfort. "Eighteen," he answered.

Miss Parker frowned. Eighteen wasn't that young, it meant that she was legally an adult, already.

"I'm not sure you'd be of the same opinion upon the matter if I were Lyle, or if I were to tell you the young woman's name," Cox told her, not able to look at her, it seemed.

Miss Parker laughed. "But you don't kill girls-" she began in protest.

"Neither does he," Cox replied, cutting her off. "His company has a very strict policy on infringements of the law."

A frown broke over Miss Parker's face.

"The Aurora Institute, L.A., it appears, are a rival of ours," Cox told her, turning his face to look at her.

"Did you just-?"

"Just now, yes," Cox answered.

"I didn't…"

"You do not have a connection with Monique."

"The murdered girl?"

Cox offered a nod, preferring not to acknowledge his friend by that title.

"He's still working for them? Who are they? I mean, they're a rival, but… what do they do? Are they going to be a threat? Are they trying to acquire Jarod? Or Charlton?"

Cox placed a hand on her arm to stop her ramblings. "It is alright," he told her. "Monique says that it is alright, for now."

"I don't like it," she told him.

"Neither do I."

* * *

**Truth and doubt** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


	3. Chapter 3

Miss Parker woke in the middle of the night, confused. It was a few moments before she realised her telephone was ringing and reached for it. She sat up in bed, blinking. "Yes. Who is it?" she responded, still shrugging of tiredness.

"It's Jar," Jarod's voice replied from the other end of the line.

"Hmm…"

"There something… something wrong," Jarod told her.

Her eyes snapped open wider and she immediately envisaged him caught in some terrible danger, or Ethan. "What is it?" she asked, careful to keep her voice steady. She didn't know yet that he was in danger, and she'd feel bad for worrying him for no good cause at this time of the night.

"There's something wrong with Lyle," Jarod explained.

Miss Parker frowned. "Something like what?" she asked.

"With his genetics," Jarod replied.

"Well, what's wrong with them. He's not my brother, so, is it really that big of a concern?"

"He's your nephew," Jarod told her. "At least, he and Charlton share the same genetic code."

Miss Parker laughed, wondering if she was having a dream or if Jarod was just having her on. Hours before he'd said that Charlton was his dead brother's son, and now he was saying that Charlton was a clone. "What?"

"Charlton is Kyle and Annie's son," Jarod stressed.

Miss Parker shook her head again. When he felt like making sense, she'd feel like listening. "No, they can't all be clones." That was the only way she saw it as feasible, except, as Jarod's clone, Gemini, was the Center's first successful clone in 1985, it wasn't feasible, at all. "I think there must be something wrong with your readings." She sighed heavily. If it turned out Cox wasn't really her brother, after all, then Jarod was going to be in order for a serious dressing down.

"Mom says it's Lyle who's the clone," Jarod told her.

"What?"

"She used to work as a geneticist, and she says it's Lyle who is the clone, but that he doesn't have the anomaly as we've already observed, but that Charlton has."

Miss Parker blinked. "Jarod, what have you been drinking? Are you driving? You had better not be driving? Are you alone? Is someone there with you?"

"Hello?"

Miss Parker frowned. A woman's voice had just come on over the line. "Hi," she replied back.

"This is Margaret," the woman told her. "I stand by my earlier statement to my son. Kyle's son is not a clone."

It was a moment before Miss Parker realised that Charlton was her grandson. "I can only tell you what I told Jarod; it's not possible. It's not possible that Lyle is Charlton's clone." She repeated.

"Nevertheless, he is," Margaret replied, unmoved.

"Well, you'd better put a stop to Jarod blowing up his cars, then, he's your grandson. You wouldn't want him to be accidentally blown up." It probably hadn't been the most sensitive thing to say, but she was tired. "Oh, hang on, you know, I've just realised something. Didn't he shoot Kyle? Wasn't that him? You know what, I think it was."

She was immediately after met with the sound of the call disengaging.

She threw the telephone receiver away from her and lay back down. If Jarod didn't mind his mother going all alien conspiracy on him, then that was fine for him; it wasn't fine for her. If that were the case, then she didn't mind hanging the Hell up, or saying the first thing that'd get Margaret to hang up on her.

"She's right, you know," a voice told her from out of the darkness.

She dived up into a sitting position, her gun in her hands and pointed straight ahead of her. After a moment, she chanced to reach out a hand to grab for the lamp and switch it on.

It switched on before she could reach for it. Lyle frowned at the gun she was holding, now pointed at him. "I am a clone," he continued. "Our people no longer resemble the people of your time. We have much longer life spans, I should add." He smiled. "Well, my people, not strictly I, though. I am as you are, and I was not built to last extraordinary lengths of time. Just until your baby is born, and then I shall have completed my creation directive."

Miss Parker pulled a face. "What are you on, Lyle?" she growled.

"All of these languages your planet and its people have now, they're all long dead by my time. Dead and buried by time. We didn't even have an idea of how to speak them, though we were able to translate them."

She laughed. "If you are… what you claim you are, then there is no 'my time' and 'your time.' You're Bobby Bowman. Here, on Earth, you're Bobby Bowman. You were Bobby – so cut the crap. You've never been there – to the future, or wherever!"

"I was created there, and, like all of our people, I was given a certain base knowledge. Not as widely covering as others, I imagine, and with, perhaps, more of an emphasis on history, but a knowledge, no less. I am not from your time. Must I repeat myself into oblivion, it becomes rather dull after the first few hundred times?"

Miss Parker put her gun down. Clearly, Jarod was right, but not about what he thought. There was something wrong with Lyle. "Say, then, that you're from… what, the future? Say that you are from the future, but you're a clone, right, so you're not like the other 'people.' Then how are you able to be… This base knowledge that you're so adamant of, how does that get to you? You're human, right? Wouldn't it… damage you?"

"It is merely a process of creating the right neural pathways that might be activated for the knowledge to be recalled, is it not?"

"I don't know," Miss Parker shot. How the Hell would she know? Was she a neurologist? Not as far as she could remember! "And that wouldn't damage a newborn baby? I have my doubts." She shook her head. "Are you going to tell me why you shot Kyle, then?"

"It was an accident," Lyle replied.

"You accidentally shot your father!" She sucked in a breath. "Ooh, I hope you weren't planning on having any siblings."

Lyle made a face, unimpressed.

She picked up her gun and waved it at him. "Get the fuck out of my house, lunatic!" She narrowed her eyes in a hard glare. "I'll only say it once!"

Lyle turned and walked toward the door. "Goodnight, aunt," he called back to her.

* * *

**Truth and doubt** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


	4. Chapter 4

"So why don't you have the anomaly? Charlie has it; why don't you?"

Lyle frowned, turning to glance at her in the enclosed space of the Printer Room, where he'd been sent by Sydney. "Elements of the code were degraded and unstable," he answered, without inflection. "They were removed in the restoration process, I'd think."

"So you're not a perfect clone!" Miss Parker declared, a hint of victory about her voice.

"I am not," he replied, indifferent. "Would you kindly allow me to pass?"

She stepped further into his path, blocking his way out of the room, and smiled. "Why'd you kill Jimmy? Tell me why you killed him and I'll let you pass!"

"Jimmy was my friend, but he had his own friends, as well. More precisely, he had a girlfriend. She was very heavily into marijuana. I didn't kill him, I covered up for her. These days, kids think that it's safer than the other illicit drugs on the market, but it's not. I think you know that, and I know that. I needed a way out; I got a way out, and I took it. Take it or leave it, you decide; now kindly step aside."

Miss Parker grinned. "I think you're a lying sack of shit, you know that!"

"Now that you've just told me, yes, I do know that," Lyle replied, walking away from her with the papers he'd collected for Sydney from the printer.

She glared after him.

* * *

She sat down on the opposite side of the table in the dining hall, a glare already in place. "I'm not your aunt," she hissed. "Annie was only my half sister. I don't want you." Her glare strengthened. "Tell me what you want with my baby, and tell me now, or I'll shoot you dead in front of everyone here!"

"Canto is very important to us, that is all," Lyle told her.

"'Canto'? You seriously don't expect me to believe that's what I'm going to name my baby!"

"I don't know what you're going to name her," Lyle admitted, "but that is the title by which I know her."

Miss Parker learnt back in her chair violently, away from him. "What? How do you know it's going to be a male or a female?" She hadn't wanted to know that, whether it was truth, or not!

"In my time, Canto is a female," Lyle replied, frowning at her coffee as though only now noticing it.

She reached out and grabbed it before he could take it and hold it out of her reach. "She's… She's still alive in your time?"

Lyle's frown changed, as though he realised that he'd said something wrong, or something that he'd been restricted from saying. "It is not important what is and is not in my time. It is, as you say, not, in fact, my time. My time is this time, now."

"_Is_ she _alive_ in your time?" Miss Parker growled, pulling out her gun and pointing it at him from across the table.

Lyle sighed, unperturbed by the gun. "Yes, she is alive, though she has passed through five regenerative cycles."

Miss Parker did the mentally calculation in her mind. "That's 350 years."

"3,500 years," Lyle corrected.

Miss Parker stared at him. "And you're my nephew, from 3000 years into the future?"

Lyle stood up quickly. "I think I should leave you to eat," he told her, and turned about and walked away to find another table.

Miss Parker frowned. Apparently, to people in the future, emotion was either disgusting or highly frightening. Or maybe that was just to Lyle.

* * *

"He's deeply mentally ill, I'll tell you," Miss Parker told Jarod over the phone.

He'd rung, so she'd answered. Sydney was under the impression that she was insulting him instead of doing her job, which was teasing out clues as to his current whereabouts.

She paused for a breath. She needed more time; she needed more time to breathe. She needed more time, but she needed to tell him now, before anything happened. "I'm pregnant," she said.

"Alright," was Jarod's only response.

Miss Parker made a face. 'Alright'? He was only going to say 'alright'? "What? Jarod, the baby's yours, you Dumbo! She's yours!"

Jarod's voice was quieter when he spoke again, and Miss Parker almost missed it over the thud-thud of her heart. "She?"

Miss Parker froze. Oh, shit, she hadn't-! But she had! She nodded weakly. "Sh-she! Catherine says it's going to be a she," she lied. (Catherine hadn't said anything, if truth be told.)

There was the sound of scraping, a thud, and then nothing.

"Jarod? Jarod? Come back to the phone, Jarod! Jarod, you're going to piss the Chairman off wasting the company's money on long distance phone calls you're not even taking…"

Miss Parker relaxed and settled back in her chair, feeling the steady rise and fall of her chest. She'd have to tell the others, soon. She'd have to tell Cox – well, tell him that it was a girl, according to Lyle – and Sydney and Broots, and Debbie, not to mention her doctor, Dr. Brown, and the Chairman.

On the other end of the line, she heard a scraping again, and then Jarod's voice, bright with excitement, "I just told Ethan, and mom."

"I see," Miss Parker announced dully. "Have you announced the wedding date, also?"

"We're getting married?" Jarod cried.

Miss Parker hung up. She really shouldn't have said that, she knew. And now she'd just hung up on the poor guy! Great!

* * *

Six months later, the baby was born, a tiny, little pink girl.

The Center was bought up by a larger rival whom had gone off the radar for a while and returned bigger and meaner than ever, and the hunt for Jarod was called off. This new company had their own means of procuring Pretenders, and ample amounts of them already; they weren't interested in spoiled product.

Miss Parker left the Center, and Delaware, with Angelo, to meet up with Jarod, and, a few months later, Cox followed her. (Despite the early death threats, Jarod allowed him to stay in reasonably close proximity.)

From what she'd heard, Broots had gone to work for some big, expensive company in Washington, and Debbie had, of course, gone with him.

Sydney, Michelle, and Nicholas had moved to California.

And Miss Parker didn't name the baby Canto. She named her Terra. (And Jarod nicknamed her Berry.)

They did get married, in the end.

* * *

**Truth and doubt** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


End file.
